If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Welcome to Mac-Forums! Join us to comment and to customize your site experience! Members have access to different forum appearance options, and many more functions.

Last evening I did a silly thing. I d/loaded & installed an App without really doing any research on it. Why? Predominantly because I saw it advertised here, prominently on this site, where I have had so much good advice, and pointers to so many valuable Apps.

The App is of course MacKeeper... which I still see advertised here today.

I d/loaded & installed the Trial version (very glad I didn't pay for it!!!) and pretty much got very loud and persistent warning bells clanging in my head from the moment I 1st ran the app. This is an app that touts itself as sort of a "Swiss Army Knife" of all things Mac maintenance... drive cleaner, av, stolen-mac finder... you name it. Yeah, right. I should have known better.

The 1st glance at this app running bought back all the bad memories of old Windoze apps... "buy-me-now" pop-ups, nag-screens, dire warnings of supposed "problems" on the Mac... the whole shooting box all rolled-up into one neat little Mac app.

Within 5 minutes of the installation I was looking for ways to shut the whole **** thing (including all the add-in's) down and get it off my system. A simple drag to the Trash didn't work, despite reboots. I had to manually hunt-out all the add-ins and processes, shut them all down, then
nuke the whole thing with AppZapper before MacKeeper's own uninstall routine kicked-in and I could get it all into the trash for a Secure delete! An internet search revealed several other places I needed to go in root & user libraries to finally rid myself of this pestilential installation.

The uninstall has taken several hours.

Now, this post is not to "blame" MacForums for something I should not have done... it's very much a mea culpa. Rather this post I hope will serve as a warning to other users, particularly in regard this shonky software. I would however be rather grateful if perhaps MacForums administrators were a little more aware of exactly what was being advertised on their site.

Once I had realised the error I had made, it didn't take very long at all to find out just how bad this App is. As I said previously, given that the App was advertised here -a site I trust- my usual caution was somewhat lowered. Others may fall into the same trap. Surely there is some level of filtering/control possible with what Apps are presented to users here, with the intent of providing users with recommendations for solid, reputable Apps rather than these random -possibly malicious- apps?

As I said in the original post schweb, it is definitely a mea culpa. I take full responsibility for my own actions and shortcomings. The software could definitely be perceived as malicious given the way it "takes over" the system with pop-up's, slow downs, false alerts and nagging to "upgrade" to the paid version. I consider anyone that fails to deliver on their promises or causes problems like this software does to be acting maliciously.

FWIW, I did attempt to uninstall following the instructions. That failed. That's why I had to search deeper, where I found many other users had similarly failed following the provided uninstall instructions -where they could be found. Further, any "hostility" I may be displaying is towards those that develop & market products such as this, not toward MF.

The point of the post however, was a plea to MF admins to please be aware of what is being advertised on your site! Don't advertise software like this that may (read: probably will) cause far more problems than it is worth, whilst failing to deliver on any of its promises. Many others like me perceive MF as being a fine, trusted source of information and advice. I hope that future advertising of software/products on the MF site will be for products/software worthy of the (implied) MF endorsement.

Yeah Virgeist, I concur. Everything I have subsequently read about this software and company points to them being the worst kind of shonks.

hmmm... baggss, yeah I could take a "head-in-the-sand" approach and simply pretend they don't exist, but personally I reckon it's better to try (at least) to encourage reputable sites to actively manage the content they allow to be advertised, with their implied endorsement.

I fell into their trap with lowered defences because it was advertised on a site I trust; others may do also. Far better that a shonky product like this just never gets to see the light of day on a reputable site.